


Carousel

by Prim_the_Amazing



Series: life is a rollercoaster [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Sequel, Stranger!Jon, head archivist!sasha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27525949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: “Hello,” says the preposterously good looking version of Tim. “Is Tim here?”“Oh-- no, I’m sorry. He went out to do some fieldwork. He should be back in… I don’t know, it could be a while, actually. I could call him?” Martin belatedly stands up. It feels weird, having a conversation with someone while seated several feet away from them. He approaches him.“No, that’s alright,” says the man who is even prettier close up. It’s awful. “I’ll just see him at his flat, then. Thought I could catch him for a brief chat at work while I was in the neighborhood.”“I could tell him you stopped by?” he suggests. “What’s your name?”“Danny,” the man says. “I’m his little brother.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Series: life is a rollercoaster [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2004190
Comments: 56
Kudos: 213





	Carousel

Martin’s alone in the Archives when he first meets him. 

Well, Sasha’s in her office, but she’s got her door closed, which she only does when she’s recording a statement, so she really shouldn’t be disturbed unless it’s really important. Tim’s out doing some legwork for the follow up of a statement, and so it’s just Martin. It’s a bit quiet, a bit lonely, being completely alone in the large, if cluttered, room. Even when Tim’s just tapping away at his keyboard over at his own desk, neighbouring Martin’s, that’s enough to make the place feel less… empty. It’s nice, having company. 

Maybe that’s why he’s been having a bit of a hard time focusing on his work, in the last half hour or so. With Tim gone and Sasha shut off in her office both at once it’s just-- somehow distracting, even though it should probably be the opposite. He’s just always worked better with a bit of a background hum to drown out some of his more distracting thoughts. He feels restless, uncomfortable. Just a bit. 

So, yes, he jumps and startles when there’s a knock at the door into the Archives, hand to his chest. But the distraction is welcome. The company is welcome. Who could even be knocking? Tim wouldn’t knock. Is Elias stopping by to see how things are going? He’s mostly been fairly hands off so far-- maybe it’s Rosie? 

“Come in?” he says, like it’s a question. 

The door creaks open, and Tim is standing there. 

Wait, no. Not Tim. A man who looks a lot like Tim but… even more handsome? Christ, he didn’t even know that was possible. That’s just not fair. 

The man looks at him, his expression blank, and then a smile blooms on his face so quickly and warmly that it _has_ to be fake. It’s a very, very _good_ fake smile though, so Martin feels himself start to go a little bit flushed anyways. Damn it. 

“Hello,” says the preposterously good looking version of Tim. “Is Tim here?” 

“Oh-- no, I’m sorry. He went out to do some fieldwork. He should be back in… I don’t know, it could be a while, actually. I could call him?” Martin belatedly stands up. It feels weird, having a conversation with someone while seated several feet away from them. He approaches him. 

“No, that’s alright,” says the man who is even prettier close up. It’s awful. “I’ll just see him at his flat, then. Thought I could catch him for a brief chat at work while I was in the neighborhood.” 

“I could tell him you stopped by?” he suggests. “What’s your name?” 

“Danny,” the man says. “I’m his little brother.” 

“Oh! Tim’s never mentioned a brother before.” He clacks his mouth shut belatedly. Was that a rude thing to say? It was probably a rude thing to say. He hates how being around pretty people immediately makes the likelihood of him putting his foot in his mouth skyrocket. It’s so stupid. “B-- but we never really talk about family much, so--” 

The man laughs. He’s got a perfectly charming laugh, the sort that beautiful actors in movies pull out. No snorting, nothing nasally or unflattering about it. “It’s alright,” he says. “Tim can be secretive about some things. It was a pleasure to meet you…?” 

“Martin,” he says, idly wondering if it would be weird if he asked Tim if his brother was single. Which, yeah, that’s not going to happen. For one, Tim _would_ tease him mercilessly until the end of time, it _would_ be weird, and secondly? Martin knows when someone’s out of his league. “Martin Blackwood, it’s very nice to meet you.” 

“A pleasure,” he repeats, and he says it in a way that makes it sound _sincere._ It probably isn’t-- all they’ve done is exchange some pleasantries and basic information, so far. Martin hasn’t even had the chance to be witty or charming or _a pleasure to meet,_ so far. He’s just being nice. He’s very good at being nice. He wears it well. Martin feels sort of inadequate just standing in the same room as him. 

Martin sort of expects for him to turn around and leave then. He almost does, actually. He starts to turn towards the door-- and then he stops, as if thinking better of it. He looks at Martin, and his smile is gone. It disappeared as quickly as a snuffed candle, like he dropped the mask the second that he felt that the conversation was over, and then forgot to put it back on once he changed his mind. 

It’s… weirdly unsettling, kind of. Martin shakes the feeling off. 

“How is Tim?” he asks, and there’s an intent edge to his words, something like concern flickering across the expression that he’s clearly forgotten to school. 

“You don’t know?” Martin asks dumbly. Foot, meet mouth. 

“I haven’t visited in… some time. We really only see each other a couple times a year nowadays. And whenever we do see each other, we always seem to get sidetracked, instead of catching up.” He almost sounds sad when he says it, and something in Martin’s chest twinges with sympathy. Only seeing your family during holidays, not being able to hold a proper conversation with them when you do see them-- sounds lonely. Sounds familiar. 

“He’s fine,” Martin tells him. He scrambles for a moment for something of more substance to say. “Really, he is. He’s been working together with Sasha a lot, figuring out how to tackle organizing the Archives. Which isn’t relaxing, exactly, but I think he’s getting something out of it? It-- it’s satisfying. Absorbing work.” 

“He’s fine,” Danny says. “Happy?” 

Martin nods. Tim’s one of the more cheerful people he’s ever met, honestly. Always ready with a dumb joke or the occasional prank. Friendly. He’s a good coworker, Martin likes him. Even if last April Fools _had_ almost given him a heart attack. 

Something in Danny that Martin hadn’t even noticed was tense relaxes at that. He smiles again, but this time it’s small and soft, and so different that he’s now convinced that what he saw earlier was just a pretty lie. Just being polite and friendly with a stranger. 

Martin’s heart sort of palpitates at the sight of it. _Stop it,_ he tells himself sternly. _Absolutely_ out of his league. 

“Good,” he says, and even his voice sounds a bit different now. Not strong and confident, but softer, quieter. “That’s good to hear.” 

“Y-- yeah,” he agrees. His face feels hot. He wishes he could hide it without it being incredibly conspicuous. 

Danny thanks him, says goodbye, and leaves. Martin tries to focus on his work, instead of Danny’s gentle, sincere smile when Martin had told him that Tim was fine. 

Tim is very, very lucky to have a brother who obviously cares about him so much. Martin hopes they get to catch up soon. 

“... and I know that making this statement isn’t going to change anything,” she goes on, reading out loud to the quietly whirring tape recorder. “But I know he wouldn’t want to be a mystery. He _hated_ unsolved mysteries. He’d call a mystery novel ‘clumsy and poorly constructed’ if it didn’t hand him a satisfying conclusion on a plate, even if the lack of resolution was the whole point of the book. He wanted answers, answers that made sense, that he could wrap his head around and understand. I’m not sure that this is that. What I know about what happened to him is so little… but it’s the best I have. 

“And someone else should know that the thing calling itself Jonathan Sims nowadays is _not_ my Jon. Not anymore.

“End Statement.” 

She sets down the written statement of Georgie Barker and takes a moment to just breathe and remind herself that her name is Sasha James, and she is _not_ mourning a murdered ex boyfriend. These are just-- just words on a page. They’re not her, even if it feels like it when she reads it, even if the feeling clings to her like cobwebs. 

On the back of her neck, the sensation of being _watched_ looms and weighs heavy on her. She doesn’t turn around to look. She knows she isn’t going to see anything there, just like all of the other times she’s felt this. 

“There are several Jonathan Sims living in London-- it’s a crowded city, after all. But I narrowed it down to just one that attended Oxford University five years ago, dug up his address, and then set Tim loose on the problem. I asked him not to let me know whatever methods he decides to use to determine whether or not the skin he’s wearing is the one he was born with,” she says glibly, like she’s making a joke. Like she isn’t worried. 

She hadn’t wanted to let Tim go and look into this case-- it refused to record digitally, and by now she knows what _that_ means. Sending one of her assistants to something that she _knows_ is a monster is just begging for trouble. That, and the fact that Tim always gets a certain way about statements that are about changelings, imposters. Darker, angrier. She knows why, but… that just makes her more worried, not less. But she’d made him promise that he’d only have an innocuous conversation with ‘Jonathan Sims’ at most. He’d _promised._

Whatever watches her when she records the statements meant only for tape recorders doesn’t need to know any of that, though. She prefers it when _she_ knows all of the secrets, not someone else. 

Speak of the devil: she hears Tim’s voice, muffled outside of her closed office door. He must be back. That’s one less thing to be worried about, then. She starts gathering up the pages of Georgie Barker’s statement and Tim’s follow up notes back into their assigned file. As she does, Tim’s voice… rises in volume. Okay, nevermind, she’s worried again. Frowning, she abandons her work to open the door and see what’s wrong, and exactly how terribly it’s gone wrong in the first place. 

“--told him I work here!?” As Tim shouts that last bit he takes a step towards Martin, and Martin mirrors him by taking a step backwards away from him. 

“What-- no! He already knew that you worked here, he said he was just-- just popping by for a quick visit.” Martin is wide eyed

“What did he do? What did he say?” Tim demands. 

“That, um, he’ll just see you later at your place instead? Tim, what’s wrong? He-- your brother was perfectly--” 

“Guys?” Sasha asks. “What’s wrong?” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tim snarls, furious anger hiding white knuckled fear in the way it only ever does when it comes to _one_ thing in his life. “He’s not my brother.” 

Martin flinches back, taken aback at the sudden viciousness. Then his face twists up in a stubborn frown, and he stands straighter. 

“You--” he starts. 

“Guys!” Sasha interrupts him, before this can turn into an actual argument. Martin and Tim both turn to look at her, as if they’re only first noticing her now. “Tim, can I see you in my office?” 

“... Yeah,” Tim says eventually, and he shoulders his way past Martin. “Sure.” 

“Great, thanks,” she says, gives Martin a bright, forced smile, and closes the door behind Tim as he enters. 

The second he’s alone with her, with a closed door at his back, he lets out a shuddering breath as his expression crumples into something less jagged and more outright broken. He looks ashen. 

“The imposter again?” she asks carefully. Tim had made it very clear the first time they talked about this that the monster is _never_ to be called by his brother’s name. 

“I--” he says, and he stops, looking close to tears. She makes him sit down in her chair. He takes some deep breaths, and she takes his hand and waits. He grips onto her hand tightly, like it’s a lifeline. Wipes at his face hurriedly. Eventually, he speaks. “It came and visited the office while I was out, apparently,” he says raggedly. “Had a friendly little _chat_ with Martin, asked about me.” 

“Oh,” she says. A chill goes down her spine at that. She’s never actually _seen_ the imposter before. It only ever seems to visit Tim while he’s alone. Usually when he’s in his flat, or walking home through a dark alley. But now it’s broken the pattern, talked to someone else, visited his _workplace._ It was just outside of her office, and she didn’t even realize. She remembers what Martin said. “It said it’s going to visit your flat tonight. Do you-- come stay with me tonight.” 

“It always finds me again,” he says, and he sounds a little bit numb, in a terrible sort of way. “No matter where I go.” 

“It’ll be better if you’re not alone when it finds you, then,” she says stubbornly. “Just in case this is the time it decides it wants to do more than just--” _shove your dead brother’s face in front of you to terrify and devastate you,_ “--talk at you while you try to get it go away.” 

“I’m not trying to get it to go away. I’m trying to _kill it.”_

And even though it hasn’t been fighting back, he still hasn’t managed it. That doesn’t spell good things for what might happen to Tim if the imposter ever does decide to stop playing with its food and finally eat him. 

“That just means that coming to my flat is an even better idea. Two against one, right? I’ll hold its arms back while you show it that you mean business.” She smiles at him, hoping she can coax at least a glimpse of the softer, friendlier Tim that she’s more familiar and comfortable with out of him. This Tim, this raw, hurting version of him, it’s just as much of a part of him as the happier one, but… she’s worse at handling him. It’s difficult. It’s like trying to be delicate with a fresh wound. She feels like she just keeps hurting him instead, as she’s trying to help him. 

“Do you have locks on your doors and windows?” Tim asks. 

“Yes,” she says. “Of course.” 

“But, like, _proper_ locks,” he insists. “He’s-- it’s good at getting into places. It’s strong, it can just break a door down if it has to. It doesn’t care if it cuts itself on broken glass while climbing through a window. You’ve gotta have shatterproof windows, a sturdy door, and _proper locks.”_

“I… don’t have _all_ of that,” she admits. “But--” 

“Then I’m staying at my place tonight,” he says grimly. “It would be able to get into yours.” 

“Then let me sleep over with you, then,” she says. “Okay? The two of us, together.” 

During the first couple of years that she had been working in the same department as Tim, she’d noticed that he’d be his usual sunny self one day, and then the next he’d be _quiet,_ and he’d stay quiet for weeks. He wouldn’t be back to himself for about a month, whenever that happened. She tried to keep track of what days it happened, see if maybe there was some anniversary or something that he was reacting to-- but it was completely random. No way to predict it. 

She only understood after he told her about Danny-- about the underground exploration, the theatre, Joseph Grimaldi, and then, months after he’d accepted that his little brother was dead and he was struggling to live with that-- when the most terrible thing of all happened. Danny came _back._ Miraculously whole, miraculously alive, miraculously happy to see him again. 

It had been a poor act. That was all the detail Tim had given her about that night. She got the general sense that the first visit had gotten… messy, very quickly. Worse than any of the others after. He’d given her a bit more detail about the subsequent visits. The thing, the imposter, the creature wearing Danny’s skin, it kept coming back, over and over again. It didn’t give up. It didn’t leave him alone, never for long. It insisted on coming back, over and over again, never letting the wound heal into a scar, always showing back up again to rub salt in the wound. To terrify and devastate. 

Sasha knows that Tim’s gotten good at barricading his flat, at this point. He won’t have to directly face the creature, so long as he’s in his flat when it decides to visit. Instead, it will spend hours and hours, the whole night sometimes, knocking on the door, tapping on the window, calling out to him, trying to talk to him. Tim never lets the thing in. The thing never leaves him alone. 

That’s why he came to work for the Magnus Institute. If he has any hope of finding a way out of being haunted by his own brother’s skin, it’s going to be here. Maybe. 

But until he finds that miracle solution that will finally get the monster to leave him be, to let him move on, Tim is going to have to spend two or three nights a year locked inside of his own flat while the voice of his dead brother tries to speak to him. He comes into work pale and quiet those mornings, the circles under his bloodshot eyes dark as bruises. 

Sasha is so, so sick of letting that happen to Tim over and over again. She wants to be there for him. He’s never had the forewarning of a visit before, he’s never been able to brace himself for it. She wants to be there, with him, to hold his hand through the long night and speak over the imposter’s plaintive questions, drown it’s stolen voice out with her own. She wants to help. 

“Okay,” he says, after some hesitation. “Okay.” 

She grins with satisfaction at that. “Great. We’ll swing by my place on the way to yours to pick up a few things, then, and I’m all set.” 

He nods, not looking firm or steady in the slightest, and she squeezes his hand once. It’s okay. He’s going to be okay. She’s going to be there for him, tonight, and after that… well, they’ll keep looking for a solution. She’s _going_ to find a solution for him. Even if that might end up being her just biting the bullet and buying a shotgun on the dark web, as… too _easy,_ too simple as that sounds. Really, what kind of skin stealing monster is felled by simple _bullets?_ But she will if she has to. 

“What’s that noise?” Tim asks, and she stops and listens for it. A sort of… whirring noise-- 

“Oh, damn it,” she says, and reaches out for the tape recorder. “Forgot to end the recording again.” 

She turns it off. 

Martin should mind his own business. He doesn’t know the context, the history, what’s happened between Tim and Danny. Tim’s nice, and he’d looked more furious than Martin had ever seen him when he’d told him about Danny visiting. He probably has a good reason for reacting that way. It’s not any of Martin’s business. 

He can’t help the lingering conviction that Tim is _wrong,_ though. Family’s important. Really, really important. No matter what Danny did, Tim should be able to forgive him for it-- especially when he’s so obviously sorry, so obviously wanting to reconnect, to grow closer. _Martin_ would forgive him. Martin would _kill_ for family like that, for a brother who wanted to see him enough to come and visit. Can’t Tim see how hard Danny’s trying? Martin could see it, after just one brief interaction. 

He gets the feeling that if he tries to say any of this to Tim, he’s not going to get a good reaction. And it’s not any of his business, is it? It’s not. So, he should stop thinking about it. 

_How is he,_ Danny had asked, like he really, really cared. 

_He’s not my brother,_ Tim had spat out, like the man disgusted him. 

Martin tries not to think about his mum. 

Eventually, Tim slinks back out of Sasha’s office and sits back down at his own desk without so much as a glance towards Martin, much less an apology. Martin tries to focus on his work. Tim, presumably, does the same. Sasha stays inside of her office, even though the door is open. No one talks. 

They usually talk at the very least, Sasha calling out requests or questions to them from her office or even just outright leaving to seat herself on the edge of Tim’s desk as she makes smalltalk, as Tim makes jokes that make her laugh. Martin joins in, he’s talked to, he’s involved, but… it’s strangely lonely, being in a department with two best friends. They’re nice to him, but still. It’s lonely. 

As the time to clock out approaches, he wraps up his current task, gathers up his things, and calls out goodbyes to Tim and Sasha. They both respond in kind, even if Tim’s voice is a little bit… flatter, than usual. He bites his tongue and retreats from the tense atmosphere before he says something that he’ll regret. 

Outside, sitting on the bench by the Institute, sits Danny Stoker. He drifts to a stop, staring at him. It’s raining, and it looks like it’s been doing so for a while now, the drops drumming down on top of Martin’s umbrella. Danny doesn’t have an umbrella. He’s wearing a light jacket that looks like it’s more designed for form than function, not even with a hood. He looks like he’s soaked, frigid. How long has he been sitting there? 

Without even thinking about it, Martin walks over to him, and tilts his umbrella so it’s covering Danny as well. He has to stand closely to do it, closely enough to see his wet eyelashes, but-- he’s just helping, that’s all. Danny looks up at him, surprised. It’s really incredible just how similar he looks to Tim. The biggest difference has to be their eyes. Danny’s are a green flecked hazel. 

“Hi,” Martin says. 

That beautiful, perfect smile goes back up on Danny’s face like flicking on a light switch. Looking at it now, it doesn’t make him feel as flustered as the first time. It’s almost… sad, actually. 

“Hey,” Danny says. “Martin, right?” 

“Yeah.” Martin looks back towards the entrance to the Magnus Institute. Tim hadn’t been gathering his things by the time Martin left, but he knows that he’s going to leave soon. He looks back towards Danny. “Listen. Tim’s-- he’s in a bit of a bad mood right now. If you want to see him, it might be best to-- to give him a bit of space first.” 

The smile falls away again, replaced by something sad and disappointed. “Oh.” 

“Sorry,” Martin says, the apology falling out of him almost reflexively. 

The mask goes back on. Martin sort of wishes that it wouldn’t, that it’d stay off. He knows that one of the most exhausting parts of being upset is having to smile and act like everything’s okay while talking to other people. Danny doesn’t have to do that around Martin, he wants to tell him. He’ll understand, he won’t be uncomfortable. Family can be… difficult sometimes. He knows. 

They’re basically strangers, though, so he doesn’t say any of that. 

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Danny asks him kindly. “It’s fine. Thanks for letting me know that I caught him on a bad day. I’ll leave.” 

God, he so obviously _cares_ about Tim that it almost hurts. Because Tim hadn’t been having a bad day, as far as Martin could see. Not until Martin brought Danny up. Danny’s never going to manage to catch Tim on a good day, when he’s in a good mood, open to being talked to. Not for Danny. 

Is it like that for his mum? Is she ever in a good mood when he isn’t there? Does he ruin it by visiting or calling her? 

He bites his tongue and slams the door shut on those thoughts. 

Danny stands up from the bench and turns to leave and-- and Martin-- 

“Wait!” bursts out of him. Danny stops and shoots him a curious look over his shoulder. Martin gestures a little bit helplessly with his umbrella. “D’you want to walk to the station together? We-- we can share. If you want.” 

It’s a proper, solid rain, the sort that’s going to stick around for hours. He doesn’t want to let Danny go and watch him walk off into it, cold and alone. If Tim’s not going to appreciate his brother then-- then Martin can do that _for_ him. 

Danny looks painfully surprised by the offer, like he’s not used to kindness. That’s ridiculous. That’s awful. Someone as handsome and charming and nice as him, who clearly cares so much, someone like _him_ should have people who care about him too. Right? Nothing else makes sense. 

After a moment, Danny smiles at him, and Martin’s heart skips a beat because it’s the softer, smaller smile that he’s got a sneaking suspicion is the _real_ one. 

“Thank you, Martin,” he says. “I’d like that.” 

“Okay,” Martin says, and tries not to feel any butterflies in his stomach. Remember, out of his league. 

God, but he’s like a sad puppy, though. Martin wants to take him _home._

Danny joins him underneath the umbrella. He has to stay close to Martin to remain under its cover, their shoulders and arms brushing. Martin tries not to pathetically fixate on the sensation. 

They walk to the station together. 

“So, um,” he says, because sometimes he just can’t _stand_ a silence. Which means that he started this sentence with no idea how to end it, and he _hates_ it when he does that, that’s how he always ends up saying the dumbest things. Quick, quick, think of something, _don’t_ ask him what’s wrong between him and Tim-- “what do you do?” 

Danny blinks at him. “What do I do?” 

“I-- I mean, you know, where do you work?” Wait, no, that’s creepy-- “I mean! You don’t have to tell me that, of course! That’s not what I meant! I meant, what _job_ do you have.” 

It belatedly occurs to him that Danny might be unemployed and Martin may have just stumbled across a sore spot, and god that’s the _last_ thing he wants to do when he’s clearly already having such a bad day-- 

“Oh,” he says, and he smiles in a way that’s somehow perfectly angled to put Martin at ease. Or at least, at more of an ease. Danny’s the sort of handsome that makes him a bit nervous just to be in the same vicinity as him. He really hopes that that’s going to wear off eventually. “I work at a store called the Trophy Room. I mostly man the register, but sometimes I do more general errands for the store. Help move things around, track items down.” 

“Okay,” he says, relieved that he hasn’t managed to find a way to bungle it up. Yet. “That sounds nice.” 

It feels strange, somehow, to picture Danny with such a… _normal_ job. Someone as-- with so much raw _charisma_ as him, it feels like he should be doing something more glamorous. Something with traveling and excitement and-- and some modeling, maybe? He doesn’t know. Being around someone so pretty might be temporarily turning Martin into a bit of an idiot, actually. 

Instead of agreeing with him that yes, it is nice, Danny stops. Martin walks a few steps ahead of him before he realizes, and stops to look back at him. 

“Danny?” 

“We’ve reached the station,” he says. He smiles at him. “Thank you for walking with me. It was… it was nice. Thank you.” 

Martin doesn’t know what to do, with that much sincerity suddenly aimed at him. “It was no trouble,” he says, almost on automatic. 

“Still,” he says. “Thank you.” 

The stairs down to the station looms a few steps ahead, dark and beckoning. Danny doesn’t walk towards them. Martin had sort of been hoping that they might end up taking the same train, if only for a bit. That Martin could shake off and close up his umbrella, and they’d sit next to each other and keep making small talk until one of them had to leave first. 

It’s embarrassing, how disappointed he is that that’s apparently not going to happen, how much he’d been hoping for it without even noticing. Martin’s a stranger to Danny. He accepted his offer to walk together because he didn’t have an umbrella of his own. Why would he want to sit next to him on the ride back home and listen to him prattle on? 

Has Martin been bothering him? 

“Well,” Martin says. “See you.” 

Danny gives him a last smile and a wave, and turns around to walk away. Away from the station, apparently. Martin has a sudden knee jerk reaction to offer him his umbrella, if he’s going to keep walking around in the rain, but he manages to bite it back. _He_ needs this umbrella. It’s his only one. And-- and it’d just be ridiculous, honestly. He has to get a hold of himself. 

Danny really should have an umbrella, though. Or a better jacket. 

He’s walking away. Leaving. On impulse, Martin calls out to him as he goes. 

“Good luck with Tim!” 

Danny twists to look back at him. He looks startled, but then he smiles again. “Thank you!” he calls back. And he goes. 

Martin really does hope Danny and Tim make up. Family should get along, and it’s obvious how much Danny wants that. And-- and if they _do_ start getting along again then maybe… maybe Martin might end up seeing him again some day. 

God, pretty men really do make him stupid. 

Martin goes down the stairs, into the dark, away from the rain. 

Tim gets up to check all of the locks on the windows and the door again. It’s about the third time that he’s done this since he and Sasha first got to his flat, but he can’t stop himself from compulsively checking. It’s-- it’s so hard to just _wait._ He’s never had to wait for the monster to come. It’s always been like a jumpscare before. No warning, just-- having a normal day or night and then _bam,_ it's there and it won’t leave him alone. 

He hadn’t been able to let himself relax in between the monster’s ‘visits’ for the first two years. He’d always been tense, always alert, always trying to be ready for the next time it’d suddenly appear. He’d lost his job and all of his friends and-- and it had been _awful._

And then he just… got used to it. It’s ridiculous and terrible, but he did. He’d been running out of money, he had to get a job again, and he’d been lonely and so, so tired. He’d wanted for his life to be normal again. It wasn’t, and it still isn’t but he’d wanted it so badly that he’d decided that he’d pretend like it was anyways. Just to feel sane again, just for a bit. 

So, in between visits, he acts like things are… fine. And that way, they mostly are. Until the monster comes back. And it always comes back. 

“All good?” Sasha asks him once he gets back to the couch from his restless, paranoid pacing around the flat, like he isn’t acting obviously neurotic right now. 

That’s part of what he adores about Sash, really. She knows monsters are real. She knows that triple checking your locks while holding a crowbar isn’t _irrational._ There’s nothing wrong with never feeling safe, when you know for a fact that you aren’t. 

“No signs of it yet,” he confirms. Maybe it won’t come at all. Maybe what it told Martin was just a lie, an idle cruel joke to wind Tim up. He doesn’t know if he desperately wants for that to be true, or if he’s furious at the just the idea of it. Both, maybe. 

The days right after a visit are always the worst and best days of the year. The worst, because he feels hollow and cold on the inside, like he’s been scraped clean. The best, because he’s more certain in those days than he is during any other, that the monster won’t be coming back any time soon. It makes sure to space its visits out. Once or twice a year, that’s all. That’s all. 

If it were any more frequent than that, Tim would _definitely_ be crazy by now. 

Sasha scoots aside, clearly inviting him to sit down. She’s wearing one of her frillier skirts today, something pastel with a floral print that goes down to her knees and sort of floofs outwards in many layers. He notices, because the contrast of the cleaver that she’s holding neatly on her lap like it’s a purse is somehow deeply amusing, in a surreal sort of way. It’s certainly a look. 

The monster is so strong that it’s best to have weapons with some reach when it comes to visit. Not knives, not fists. The last time he tried to punch it, he ended up breaking his own hand. Admittedly, he doesn't have a lot of practice with punching people, but… 

“Oh, you know what? I forgot to ask you earlier today, considering all of… you know. But since we’re waiting-- how did your little meeting with ‘Jon’ go?” 

Tim blinks, his mind shifting gears as he’s reminded of the honestly pretty important thing he’d done earlier today. God, he’d met a real life monster walking around in the skin of some poor murdered bastard, and it had _slipped his mind._

Well, D-- the monster, it has that effect on him. It eclipses everything, when it visits. 

“Definitely not the original Jonatham Sims,” he says. “And I think I managed to avoid letting on that I knew that.” 

“Good,” she says approvingly. “How did you manage to confirm that without letting it know what you were doing?” 

“I dug up an old picture of Jonathan Sims online before I went to find him. The eyes were different.” 

That’s the one concrete thing that’s different between Danny and the thing that acts like it’s Danny. The eyes, they’re not the same at all. It’s grounding to have that clear visual distinction between them. It’s unnerving as fuck too, to see the eyes of a stranger looking out from the face of his little brother. It’s interesting to see that that rule apparently carries over to other creatures that steal skins and use their victim’s lives like suits. Useful. 

Sasha makes an interested noise. “How did the conversation with him-- it go?” 

Tim grimaces. “Gross. I followed it to a pub, got chatting with it. It’s got a job and a girlfriend and everything, living Jonathan Sims’ life like it didn’t steal it.” 

“A girlfriend?” Sasha asks hungrily. “She could be a fellow monster. Or a future victim? It’s worth looking into.” 

“Her name was Sarah,” he volunteers. They’d made small talk. He definitely wouldn’t have been able to do that if he’d actually known Jonathan Sims, he’s fairly sure. But the dead man’s face grinning at him from across the table had been that of a stranger, so he’d been able to swallow his disgust and hatred and smile back and laugh, friendly and joking. 

“How did it act?” she goes on, endlessly curious. He likes the way her eyes go bright with interest when she finds something she thinks is fascinating, the way she perks up and leans in. And, well, the distraction is really welcome right now. He knows he has to be on his guard, but he’s so tense that it feels like he’s going to have a full body ache tomorrow, at this rate. “Did it convincingly come across as a normal human? How good was the act?” 

“That’s, uh… kinda hard to say, I guess. I was so aware that it _was_ a monster during the whole conversation that everything it did and said came across creepy as hell. Maybe it does look normal to people who don’t know, I’m not sure. God, it kept trying to get me to follow it somewhere we could be _alone_ and _private.”_

“You mean-- oh my god.” 

“Yeah, it flirted with me. Almost definitely so that it could flense me in an alley. It was-- pardon my french-- the absolute fucking worst time I’ve ever had at a pub. It kept complimenting my _skin.”_

“Oh, _gross.”_ She wrinkles her nose in exaggerated, sympathetic disgust. “Wait. The flirting-- was that before or after it told you about the girlfriend?” 

“After.” He hadn’t been able to bring himself to stick around and keep chatting after the more overt flirting started, after all. It kept sidling closer, like it wanted to _touch_ him. Fucking nope. He’d rejected it strongly enough that he’s pretty sure that some people sitting nearby gave him side eye for it, but whatever. He’d had to get out of there before he lost his hold on his composure. 

“Classy. Okay, I’m putting that as one point down for the ‘not that good at acting human’ column.” 

“Good call.” 

The conversation comes into a bit of a lull at that point. He listens intently to the quiet, trying to see if he can pick out any suspicious noises from the rest of the background din that comes from living in London. The noise of something climbing across the outwards wall, or scratching at the windows, trying to get in. The gentle rattling of something testing a doorknob. The urge to get up and check all of the locks again itches at him. 

He’s pretty sure the last time he did that was less than ten minutes ago, though, so instead he asks Sasha the first question that comes to mind. 

“So, what are we going to do about the thing calling itself Jonathan Sims?” 

“That… is a good question,” Sasha says, looking startled by the question. 

“We’ve got to do _something,”_ he says. “Right? It’s a monster. We know it is. Who knows what it’s doing, walking around in a human’s skin? We should stop it. Kill it.” 

Sasha bites her lower lip, her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But… how? You said yourself that the thing pretending to be your brother, it’s strong and fast, right? And-- and even if we do manage to kill the Jon thing, we’re still going to have a very human looking corpse on our hands. I’ve never hidden a body before. I mean, I’m up for the challenge, but still. This is probably the worst city in the world to commit a murder, with all of the cameras.” 

All of her objections are reasonable, and that grates like sandpaper on his skin. He knows that Jonathan Sims is a monster hiding in a corpse’s stolen life, he knows here it _is,_ he knows where it _lives,_ and he’s just going to, what, leave it alone? To hurt and kill people as it pleases? He wants to do something, fix something, _win._ He’s been unable to stop something from wearing his brother’s face for years, and now he’s just going to _let_ yet another thing do the same thing to someone else? 

The idea of it makes him feel… helpless. Weak. Unable to change anything, no matter how much he wants to. 

“There has to be something,” he insists, with no helpful arguments to knock down Sasha’s perfectly logical points lined up. “Maybe we could--” 

_“Tim.”_

He bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood. Sasha flinches, her whipping around towards Tim’s front door. 

_“Tim, let me in? It’s Danny.”_

Sasha turns wide eyes on Tim. “What should we do?” she whispers, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear her over the sudden roaring of blood in his ears. 

_“Please, Tim.”_

“Should we tell it to go away? Or is staying quiet the better thing to do? Is it going to think that we’re not here and leave?” 

Tim feels frozen. 

_“Tim,”_ his brother's voice says, his name oozing past the crack at the bottom of the door. 

“Tim?” Sasha asks him quietly, concern in her eyes. She reaches out and places her hand on top of his. He’s gripping the crowbar so tightly that he can’t bring himself to loosen his hold, to turn his hand and squeeze back. 

_“I’ve missed you,”_ Danny’s voice says so, so earnestly. 

He can’t bring himself to look at the door, to see the creature's shadow in the crack under the door, just standing there. Instead, he’s looking at Sasha. He sees something angry and determined slide over her wide eyed concern, her coming to a resolution. He tries to say her name when she suddenly stands up from the couch, but there’s no breath in his lungs. By the time he realizes that she’s walking towards the _door--_

 _“Sash!”_ he says, finding his voice, springing up from the couch so quickly that he drops the damned crowbar in a loud clatter of noise. 

“One moment,” she says, undoing the locks. He walks towards her, runs, but by then it’s too late, she’s opening the door-- 

Tim sees it, over Sasha’s shoulder. It looks almost surprised that the door was actually opened for it. He remembers the last time he saw that surprised expression. It was on Danny’s twenty fourth birthday (his last birthday) when Tim surprised him by flying over to meet him where he lived for once, somewhere warm and tropical and beautiful. The surprise had lasted only for a moment, before a delighted laugh had cracked open on his face like an egg. 

The sudden memory takes his breath away like a punch to the gut. 

Sasha raises her cleaver and brings it down towards Danny-- towards the thing, swinging it with every muscle in her body. Without hesitating or flinching, the monster snaps its hands out and _grabs_ the cleaver by the blade and rips it out of Sasha’s hands. It makes it look easy. 

“Oh, fuck,” Sasha says, stunned. 

It lets the cleaver fall onto the ground and takes a step forward. Tim, the inside of his head so loud that there’s not any room for a single thought in there, pulls Sasha further back into the flat so abruptly she almost falls and slams the door shut. 

Tries to slam the door shut. The thing-- it has a hand curled around the edge of the door. It should be broken, with how hard Tim slammed it. It tries to push the door further open, and Tim scrambles to brace himself, to push back. 

“Let me in,” it says. “I just want to talk.” 

Even though Tim’s got the whole of his body pushing against the door, he can still feel his feet slide across the floor by inevitable inches. 

“Help,” he says. 

“Shit,” Sasha says. “Fuck, right, okay.” 

She comes up besides him and helps him try to push the door shut against the imposter’s monstrous strength. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding wretched. “I thought I could--” 

“It’s fine,” he says between grit teeth. He’s done the same himself before, after all. Snapped and opened the door, let it in because he couldn’t stand to listen to a single other word, because he wanted to just _end_ it. Make it stop. 

Even with the two of them braced against the door, it keeps slowly scraping open. The monster took Sasha’s cleaver from her, let it fall to the floor in the outside hallway. He dropped his crowbar back by the couch. Eventually, there’s enough of a gap that the monster just… steps inside. It lets go of the door and it slams shut all at once. Sasha recoils from it, and he stumbles to put himself between them. It’s never hurt him before, but what about other people? He never should have agreed to this, he never should have let her come. 

The thing looks at Sasha, and he moves to try and block her from its sight. 

“You have a friend over,” it says. And then it smiles, and it’s the _exact_ smile that Danny would use when he was introducing himself to someone new and trying to be charming about it, trying to dazzle them and win them over. Like it’s carved into the memory of his skin, his body, and the thing now wearing him can flip it on like a switch whenever it likes. Tim _hates_ it. (It makes him want to cry.) “Hi, I’m Danny, Tim’s brother? It’s nice to meet you…?” 

“I _just_ tried to kill you with a meat cleaver. You must have noticed.”

The _thing_ doesn’t apparently know how to respond to that, so instead it turns its focus back on Tim. 

“Are you alright?” it asks, all concern like it _cares._ “Martin told me you were having a bad day.” 

“You stay the _fuck_ away from Martin,” he spits, finding the strength to approach the thing, to loom over it. He was always just a couple of inches taller than Danny in life. He’s shaking, he realizes. Livid, terrified. 

The concern stays on its stolen face, but it gets sad, confused. It’s a familiar expression, from its visits. “It’s all going wrong again,” it says, almost to itself. “I’m not getting this right, somehow.” 

Tim’s hand fists into the collar of its shirt, white knuckled and straining. The thing doesn’t look scared. It never looks scared. 

“Either _leave,_ or _die.”_

“Maybe… maybe if I just brought you to Nikola?” it says. “She always knows how to explain things. I don’t want for you to be upset, Tim.” 

Tim _laughs_ at that, ugly and furious and incredulous, and then the creature is ripping itself out of his hold, is dodging just in time to get out of the way of a swing of Sasha’s cleaver aimed straight at its head. She must’ve gotten it back while Tim was shouting at it. He hadn’t even noticed. 

The creature turns to look at her, turning its head in a way like it’s sizing her up. Something painfully twists in Tim’s stomach, as the thing turns its focus onto Sasha. It shouldn’t be looking at her, shouldn’t be paying attention to her, shouldn’t be anywhere near arm's reach of her. It’s not right, it’s not okay. It’s the scariest thing he’s ever experienced since the first time he saw his dead little brother again. 

Without thinking about it, like forcing yourself to do something painful and horrible by doing it quickly, he reaches out and grabs the monster, wrapping his arms around it from behind, restraining it. 

It should feel like touching a corpse. It should be cold and stiff, it should reek of rot. 

It’s warm and slightly yielding instead, like another human body. It smells a bit like dust, and a bit like Danny without any of the fancy cologne or sunscreen he’d use. 

He wants to be sick. 

The thing turns its head to look at him, just a sliver. He can feel its breath against the side of his face. He squeezes his eyes shut. 

The monster’s so strong it must be able to break out of his hold whenever it wants to. But it should give Sasha enough time to run, right? To get away? Please. 

It doesn’t try to get out of his hold. 

“Who’s Nikola?” Sasha asks, instead of running. 

Tim opens his eyes, looks at her. She’s still standing ready with the cleaver but… the light is hitting her eyes in a way that almost seems to catch and reflect it. She looks _intent._ Fascinated. 

“Nikola Orsinov,” the thing says. “The ringmaster. The owner of my skin.”

She takes a step closer to it, like that’s at all safe, at all a good idea. He tightens his grip on the thing, but it doesn’t so much as twitch. It’s almost like it can’t tear its gaze away from Sasha’s. 

“The owner of your skin?” she asks. _“What does that mean?”_

Unnoticed, a nearby tape recorder that hadn’t been there before clicks on. The thing calling itself Danny Stoker starts to speak. 

Elias looks, and he wonders how much of this he should allow to happen. 

His gaze settles comfortably behind Sasha James’ eyes, as if there’s already a space carved out there for him to look out of her. And in a way, there is. She’s his Head Archivist, after all. To do this to anyone else would be a drain, and would eventually even leave him fatigued if he continued long enough, might _hurt_ him. Not her. It’s as easy as breathing. 

She is dragging a statement out of Danny Stoker who is No One who is… their original name is so lost to them that not even the Eye can pull it out into the light. Nonetheless, Sasha is using her abilities on a creature of the Circus, and it’s going _wonderfully._ He had thought that it would be years before she became able to do something like this, and instead it has only been a few months. How _exciting._

There are more dangerous creatures out there than this thing wearing the skin of dear Tim’s brother. Still, it _is_ dangerous. He hadn’t been expecting for things to happen this quickly, for Sasha to jump into the deep end of the pool so soon. He had thought that he’d have to carefully arrange encounters himself, moving pieces and meticulously increasing the danger of each incident so gradually that it would be like boiling a frog. 

In the worst case scenario, this creature may kill her, as newly fledged and inexperienced as she is. 

In the best case scenario, she gains her first scar as the Head Archivist. His Archive. 

Sasha James has already been scarred once: an unfortunate accident with an object tainted with the Dark during her days in the Artefact Storage department. It had left her with a gash on her back that healed back twisted and painful, still bothering her even now on particularly cold days. One of her coworkers had been even less lucky, and had perished in the same incident. It had been enough for her to request, to _beg,_ to be transfered. He granted it. He granted it, and he kept her somewhere in the back of his mind after that. When he realized what he’d have to do to become king of the world, what was needed of his Head Archivist, she occurred to him as a perfect solution. Recklessly curious and already once scarred, she was too convenient for him to pass up. 

This, though. This is going to be her first scar since Elias decided what her new purpose would be. The scar of the Dark is merely incidental, an idiotic accident of no meaning that only coincidentally turned out to be useful to him. This is the first test to see if what he seeks to make happen is at all doable. 

She seems so perfect, it truly would be such a shame to have to start over again. And Gertrude _did_ die less than half a year ago. It would probably look strange if he lost two Head Archivists in a row so quickly, as confident as he is that he’d be able to escape any consequence. 

Elias lurks behind Sasha James’ gaze as she devours every word that is pulled from the unwilling lips of the monster before her. The monster that may very well be too much for her, too quickly. The monster that may be the end of her, when she’s only just beginning. He downs his glass of bourbon. 

“Sink or swim,” he decides, and he allows it. 

Danny leaves the very moment the last word is mercilessly dragged out of him as unstoppably as a fish caught on a hook. Tim’s arms drop away from him, unresisting. The woman’s eyes track him as he goes, unblinking and still hungry. He doesn’t turn around to look, but he can _feel_ her gaze burning on the back of his neck, prickling and itching. 

He runs. 

Danny doesn't know what happened to him-- what that woman _did_ to him. He just knows that it hurt more than anything he can clearly remember. It _still_ hurts. Like someone has cut slits into his skin and ripped and pulled them open to have a hungry look around at what lies underneath, cruel and apathetic in its ravenous curiosity. It _hurts._ It’s _wrong._

He doesn’t know where all of the words he vomited came from. He hadn’t even known that he’d known those things. That he was once a sad, lonely man who wandered into a taxidermy shop and then-- and then--

His name is Danny Stoker. He works for the Trophy Room. His employer, his keeper and his owner and his life and his death, is Nikola Orsinov. He has a brother named Tim, who he misses very much, and wants to talk to so badly that he aches with it. But Tim is always upset when he visits, for some reason. He’d used to be happy, whenever Danny would surprise him and drop in. He’d always light up at the sight of him, so, so happy. 

Something changed, and he doesn’t know how to fix it, except that he very, very much does. 

He runs, and he hurts, and he’s so tired. He usually always feels so _rejuvenated_ after visiting Tim. He doesn’t know why. He just knows that it feels like he’s an hourglass full of a finite amount of sand, and as each day passes, more sand slips out of his grasp, and it just keeps going like that until he feels empty, hollow, weak, fragile and shaky and lacking in any solid substance. And then he goes to visit Tim, and he feels strong. Strong and healthy and _real_ and… 

And Tim is never happy to see him any longer. He doesn’t want for Danny to visit, even though it feels like he’s _dying_ if he stays away for too long. Even though he’s his brother. 

_Are you though,_ a voice that he doesn’t recognize whispers inside his ear. 

The sad man who traded away his skin until he didn’t have enough left to be himself. Until he had to accept whatever the ringmaster saw fit to give him. 

He is Danny Stoker. He is, he is, he is. 

He runs, and he is tired. He always feels rejuvenated after visiting Tim, but he’s so _tired_ now. Like everything he had left was burned away underneath the magnifying glass of that woman’s hungry, hungry eyes as he talked, extinguished like ants underneath her gaze. 

Danny goes back to the closest thing he has to a home. The Trophy Room. 

The bell rings over his head. He staggers inside, and the animals shift out of his way and leer at him. 

“How was it?” Moose asks. 

“You went to toy with your brother again, didn’t you?” Bear asks. 

“Was it fun?” Fox asks. 

“Did he _scream?”_ Stag asks. 

He stumbles past them until he reaches the counter, leaning his weight on it as he goes around behind it, and then he slowly crumples onto the floor. This way, it feels like he’s hiding. No eyes on him. He desperately doesn’t want any eyes on him, in this moment. He just sits there, collapsed against the counter, and stares at the wall. Belatedly remembers to breathe. 

“Well, you don’t look sated at _all,”_ Nikola says. 

Danny looks up. She’s standing in front of him, looking down at him, head tilted consideringly to the side, as if she’s evaluating him. He hadn’t even known that she was in London, much less the store. She appears as unpredictably as the weather, staying away for months at a time before appearing with a ‘surprise inspection’ for the store. (For him.) 

The skin she’s wearing is fresh enough that the blood hasn’t dried yet. 

“Hello, Nikola,” he says, even though a strange, profound dread turns over in his stomach at the sight of her. 

“What did you do to yourself?” she asks him. “I thought you were going to go and get yourself a snack tonight.” 

He doesn’t understand. 

“Wasn’t your brother at home?” she asks him. “Did he kill himself while you were gone? I hate it when they do that. A beautiful project years in the making, and it’s all undone because they decided to go ahead and shoot themselves in the head while you were leaving them to simmer and marinate for a bit. It’s like burning a half made quilt. Disappointing.” 

“He didn’t kill himself,” he says. 

“Something else finished the job for you while you had your back turned, then? How rude.” He opens his mouth to correct her, no, Tim is alive, what is she talking about? But she flaps a dismissive hand, and he shuts his mouth. The skin of the hand-- it’s like a glove that she hasn’t bothered to tug neatly into place, so instead it’s all bunched up in places, hanging loose around the tips of the fingers, the skin slapping against her hand as she gesticulates. “Never mind the why of it. You have to figure out what you’re doing to _eat,_ dear.” 

“I… I don’t understand,” he says. 

“Still? Well, I guess that’s what I get for letting you get away with just glutting yourself on one banquet a year, like a python! You’re very lucky, you know. Not all of us can find someone who reacts so _viscerally_ each and every time. It’s going to be different from now on, now that you can’t go and see your brother any longer. You’re going to have to learn _habits._ Learn how to _properly_ skin someone.” 

His stomach turns over, at that. 

Nikola has ordered him to skin people before. He’d done as she said, because she owns his skin. He’d done his best with trembling fingers, his hands soaked in slippery blood. The-- the people, they’d struggled, flinched and moved away from him. It had been difficult. 

He had sloppy stitchwork, had been Nikola’s final verdict. Unsteady hands, crooked cuts, poor craftsmanship. An absolute waste of good skin. She’d stopped ordering him to skin people, and he’d been so, so quietly glad for it. He prefered just working the till, helping with the grunt work usually reserved for Breekon and Hope. He prefered it a lot. Even if the packages sometimes screamed or tried to get away. 

“I’ll figure it out,” he says, because Danny never stammers, even when he’s nervous. He knows how to talk in a way that makes it sound like he knows what he’s doing. 

He has no idea of what he’s doing. 

“Are you sure?” she asks him. “I could go and fetch someone for you and bring it back, like a mama bird. You still haven’t properly learned how to fly yet, have you?” 

“I can handle it,” he says. “I’ll find something to eat on my own. Don’t worry about me.” 

Something to eat. What does that mean? She isn’t talking about food. She’s talking about blood and skin. It’s so hard to think. It’s always hard to think, but even more so now. He’d felt so tired before he’d gone to visit Tim, and he’s even more tired now, after talking to that woman. He almost feels like an extinguished candle, the wick smoking but unburning. He feels… something. A need, prickling across his entire body, his skin, underneath the tips of his fingers. 

He just knows that he doesn’t want to skin anyone. It had been… horrible beyond words. And so, so familiar, somehow. 

“So independent,” she says. “Well, if you’re sure! I guess you shouldn’t have any trouble luring someone somewhere dark and private all alone with you, hmm? Not with that pretty face!” 

She reaches out and pinches his cheek. Her fingers are cold, wet, grabbing too hard. He can feel the smear they leave behind as she lets go. He smiles. Danny’s good at controlling his expressions, at doing and saying the right things at the right times. 

Blood and skin. Lure someone somewhere dark and private, all alone. Eat. 

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but he’ll… he’ll figure it out. For now, he just desperately wants to convince Nikola that he doesn’t need her help. She helps him, sometimes. He never likes it. 

“I have someone in mind,” he assures her. 

He doesn’t. 

“You’d better!” she says cheerfully. “Or else this lovely skin is going to someone more _deserving.”_

Every single muscle in his body clenches all at once at that. 

He can’t be No One again. He can’t. 

“Of course,” he says smoothly, because Danny Stoker is good at that sort of thing. At keeping a conversation going, and keeping everyone in it happy. “I’m going to eat.” 

It’s a promise, not a lie. He just has to find out how exactly he’s going to make it happen first. 

The door slams shut, and it’s silent for a long moment in Tim’s flat. A ringing, very _loud_ sort of silence. 

“What the fuck?” Tim eventually breaches the silence before her. He sounds shocked and shaky, the way Sasha’s knees feels shaky. They want to buckle, want to let her crumple to the floor for a bit because, really, _what the fuck?_

She staggers the two necessary steps over towards the couch and collapses on it instead. 

“What the fuck,” she agrees. The words don’t feel sharp and heavy on her tongue, the way they had when she’d asked the monster that question. It just feels like she’s moving her tongue, lips, and teeth to shape the proper syllables at the appropriate times. Talking. She’s just talking. 

What she’d done earlier had _not_ been _just talking._

She doesn’t even know how she’d done it. What it was. If it was something that had happened _to_ her instead, _through_ her. 

Can she do it again? 

“That’s-- it’s,” Tim goes on, apparently at a loss for words. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. 

“He’s just… a guy,” he says. 

She stops. Looks at him. Tim looks wide eyed and pale, but more in a stunned than terrified sort of way. He’s not looking at her. He’s looking at the door that the thing-- the person calling himself his brother had left through. 

He doesn’t know that she’s done something strange, she realizes. That’s not what he’s freaking out about. He’s focused on the revelation that the monster that’s been plaguing him for the last five years is a victim who had his own skin taken from him, before being squeezed into the skin of someone else like an ill fitting suit, and then _left_ like that to flounder his way through his new, disorienting, monstrous life. He doesn’t know that there’s anything else to be horrified or awed by. 

She could tell him. 

Tell him what, exactly? She doesn’t even know what happened. 

“Meaning that we could probably just shoot him,” she says. 

She’ll tell him when she knows, she decides. When she actually has something concrete to tell him, instead of vague questions. He has enough on his plate as it is. 

He walks dazedly over to the couch, and lets himself fall down to it next to her. “I… I guess.” 

“... But it doesn’t feel right, now?” she tests him. She makes herself put the matter of what she’d done to the side for now, just for a bit, and focuses on Tim, on Danny, on the person who isn’t Danny. She considers it herself: killing the person wearing Danny Stoker’s skin. 

It doesn’t feel good. 

“It’s…” Tim’s face scrunches up with confusion, anger, distaste. He looks conflicted. That’s reasonable. He’s _hated_ the creature plaguing him for the last half decade. It had ruined his life, he’d told her. It had made him want to die. 

Learning that there’s more to it all at once, all this time later, must be a lot to absorb. 

“He didn’t ask for this,” he says, finally settling on using actual pronouns for the creature-- the person. He hadn’t given them a name. 

“Or he didn’t know what he was getting himself into, at least,” she says. Trading away a piece of his skin one night at a time, until there suddenly wasn’t enough left for him to be him. “The supernatural doesn’t come with an instruction manual.” 

“Unless the instruction manual is cursed,” he finishes the old joke for her tonelessly, staring into the distance. 

“... I wonder who he is,” she says. He’d vomited his tragic downfall into the silence of Tim’s flat, his heartbreak and his fear and his horror, and yet she doesn’t know his name. She doesn’t know the year he was born. She doesn’t know his face. She’s not even entirely sure that he’s a he. She knows that he’d struggled all of his life to make connections, that the loss of the first true relationship he’d ever built had been gut wrenching enough for him to throw himself into danger all for the sake of forgetting himself just for a few hours. 

She can’t use any of that to identify him. It feels bizarre. She must know more profound knowledge about him than anyone else on earth, and yet she couldn’t for the life of her dig up his email address, his phone number, his social media. It is, in a way, useless information. She can’t _do_ anything with it. That doesn’t feel right. 

“Fuck,” Tim breathes, and she looks at him. He’s slumped against the couch now, his face tilted towards the ceiling, but his eyes are closed, his hand pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks like he’s got a headache brewing. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” 

That’s a good question. 

“Let’s… take a step back, think about what we’ve learned,” she says. It’s a method she remembers learning back at uni. Sometimes, the best step forwards is a step backwards, to regain some perspective, reassess and reevaluate. Take a look at the big picture before diving back in to analyze the minutia. “What _have_ we learned?” 

“That the thing wearing Danny is a human. Or was a human.” 

“A confused human, it sounds like. When he talked, it was like he really thought of you as his brother, even though he also knew that he’s just wearing Danny’s skin. There might be something… _wrong,_ with his head. Having your personhood stolen from you apparently isn’t good for your mental faculties.” 

“Which means that we can’t just talk and hash things out, then,” he says flatly. He sounds exhausted, all of the energy leached out of him. She looks at the clock. It’s very late, past midnight. And yet she’s _energized,_ brimming with brightness and curiosity, like she’s had an entire pot of coffee. Must be the residual adrenaline, she decides. 

“Probably not,” she agrees. “But it does tell us something. Until now, it seemed like he was maliciously playing a game of cat and mouse with you, drawing things out. But he’s just… disoriented. So, there isn’t actually any danger. We don’t want to kill him, and considering his strength, speed, and reflexes, that would’ve been highly difficult anyways. We don’t want to hurt him for the same reasons. It’s going to be difficult to reason with him, considering how confused he is.” 

“So we’ve been able to cross, what, all of our options off the list?” Tim asks. “Great progress.” 

“There has to be a way forward,” she says. “We just have to find it. We just need more information, more context…” 

She trails off into a silence as her mind whirrs, going over different possibilities. He hadn’t named the shop that he met the skin monster in, but he’d said that it sold taxidermy. How many of those could there be in London? Was it in London? That’s a possible lead, at least. And he’d been haunting Tim for the last five years-- she could look into people who went missing that year. Even if it is likely to be a very, very long list, considering what a huge city London is. Is there any way she could narrow that down? She has zero actual concrete identifying details on him-- well, he’d seemed very lonely. So perhaps she can cross off anyone with spouses or children on the list, then. What else? Maybe she can--

“Why did he tell you all of that?” Tim interrupts her racing thoughts. She blinks, looks at him. 

“Sorry?” 

Tim’s looking at her, not in a suspicious or accusatory way, she thinks. She can at least tell that he isn’t _angry._ She knows what Tim looks like when he’s angry. He looks a bit too… drained to really feel anything all that strongly at the moment. 

“I’ve asked him why he’s doing this to me, before,” he says. “Asked him what the hell he is. Well, I shouted it at him, but y’know. I’ve asked him questions. He’s never really answered me before. Not honestly, not like that. Why did he tell the truth to _you?”_

She knows why. Or, she _really_ doesn’t know why, actually. All she knows is that there’s something more going on. And that she doesn't want to give Tim even more questions and vagueness and uncertainties to worry over. She's supposed to be helping him. She wants to give him something solid, something firm to stand on, a proper answer. What she has isn't a proper answer. 

“Maybe he was distracted by you all of the other times?” she suggests. “He seems to have some sort of fixation on you considering… well, considering whose skin he’s wearing. I’m just a stranger to him.” 

Tim grunts dully. He doesn’t look like he buys her shoddy theory. She doesn't either, really. He also doesn’t look like he’s got a better idea. 

He really does look tired. She’d come here tonight hoping to help him in some way. He’s not crying or shaking or ranting, so she must not be doing _too_ terribly, but still. She’s brimming with energy to really start digging into this problem now that there’s finally some solid progress, new information-- but that’s not what Tim needs in this exact moment, she realizes. Later. Tomorrow. She can hold for a _few_ hours. 

“Let’s go to bed,” she makes herself say, “and we can figure out the next step in the morning.” 

“Okay,” he agrees with her easily, blinking slowly. It’s been a long day for him. Then he frowns, as if he’s just remembered something. 

“What is it?” she asks him. 

“Shh,” he says, sitting up straight. He holds a hand out, tilting his head as if he’s listening for something. She does the same, holding her breath to try and pick up on whatever he’s noticed, willing her heart to beat a little more quietly. What does he think he’s hearing? 

Is it the monster-- Danny-- No one? Is No One coming back? Is that good or bad? 

Instead of looking towards the door or the windows, he looks towards her. 

“What?” she whispers. 

He leans over and picks up her purse, forgotten in the corner of the couch. He opens it, rifles through it. She’d protest if it were anyone else. 

He takes a recorder out of it. It whirrs quietly, recording. 

“How long has this been running?” he asks. 

“Huh,” she says. “I have no idea. I-- I must’ve accidentally bumped into the recording button during the whole… thing.” 

Tim frowns, and depresses the button to make it stop. “Maybe it caught something useful,” he says reluctantly. 

“Right,” she agrees. She makes herself keep Tim’s exhaustion in mind. She’d come here to help him. “We can listen to it tomorrow.” 

“... Fine,” he says, and sets it aside. She stands up and holds out a hand to him, tugs him up from the couch. They go to bed. They leave the recorder behind on his coffee table, sitting there dull and quiet, innocuous. She looks at it over her shoulder as they go, as if it’s about to pull a disappearance act or something. 

For the life of her, she can’t remember putting a recorder into her purse before leaving work today. 

Martin’s the first to arrive in the Archives, the next day. That’s not too unusual, since Sasha’s not really a stickler about everyone clocking in at nine AM sharp so long as they all get some work done in the end. 

He’d bought a little bag of pastries on his way to work, some _nice_ ones, not just something cheap to stave off hunger for a bit. He got a blueberry muffin for himself, and one of those donuts with the vanilla cream filling that he knows that Sasha likes, and Tim’s a fan of danishes. It’s not something he does every day, or even every week, but… he sort of feels like he should show up with a peace offering? Or, not exactly, because he hadn’t done anything _wrong,_ had he? It’s just… yesterday had been uncomfortable, and he’d like for it to _not_ be uncomfortable. And showing up with a danish just for Tim would be strange, so he got something for everyone, and that way it definitely won’t look weird or pathetic at all, like he’s trying to bribe Tim into not being mad at him any longer with baked goods. 

He finishes his muffin before Tim and Sasha get in. He finishes a cup of tea. He wraps up some follow up that he’d been doing on a case yesterday. He wonders, a little shard of concern that’s probably him just worrying too much growing in his chest, if he should call them? Just to see if they’re alright? It’s almost been an hour-- 

Tim and Sasha arrive. Together, looking tired and walking close, serious faced and murmuring to each other. Sasha’s still wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday. 

“Er,” Martin says, feeling like he’s walked in on something he wasn’t supposed to see. Which is ridiculous, _they’re_ the ones walking into the room, _he’s_ sitting at his desk. They both look over towards him quickly, like they hadn’t expected for him to be here even though it’s about ten AM now, and he plasters on a cheery smile like he hasn’t noticed anything strange. “Morning! I, um, got some pastries for everyone? Except I already ate mine s-- since I’ve already been here for a while-- not that you’re late! Well, you are, but it doesn’t really matter, right? It’s just the three of us down here so… I won’t tell if you don’t?” 

He laughs nervously at his own terrible joke. Oh, he _hates_ it when he can’t stop himself from rambling. 

“Sounds good, Martin,” Sasha says eventually, smiling after she’s spoken, like she’d been too tired to remember to do it while talking. 

“Thanks for the grub,” Tim says, voice a little flat, a little quiet, but in a way that seems more like it’s because of a hangover or sleep deprivation than any lingering hostility. There’s a little pang of relief, knowing that he isn’t going to have to deal with any cold shoulders or sharp comments until Tim forgives and forgets. 

Not that Tim’s ever done something like that to him before, of course. He doesn’t know why he was bracing himself for it. 

“No problem,” he says brightly, holding out his offering to them. They both grab their own pastries, biting into them eagerly, making grateful, muffled noises. “Missed breakfast?” 

“Slipped our minds,” Sasha says around half a mouthful of a donut, delicately holding a hand over her mouth as she speaks. 

Martin wonders a little bit frantically if they’re actually trying to hide it, or if they’re trying to make it not be a big deal by just acting shockingly casual about it, as if there’s nothing to note at all about the fact that Tim and Sasha forgot to have breakfast this morning, together. And maybe there isn’t. Maybe he’s overreacting? His coworkers slept together last night, so what? They’re all adults, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter. 

He really, really wishes he could pull one of them aside and just ask them some quick clarifying questions to make sure of which one it is, because he _really_ doesn’t want to get it wrong. Of course, he can’t do that. Outright asking direct questions about it is sort of the only guaranteed wrong choice, no matter which one it is. Best to just try and avoid the topic entirely, then. Quick, think of something to say that isn’t awkwardly dancing around their relationship status. 

“... So, did Danny end up visiting you yesterday?” is what he ends up saying, and he immediately bites his tongue hard enough to taste copper afterwards, but it’s too late, the _stupid_ words are out there now. 

Tim stops eating his danish. 

“It’s just,” Martin continues, feeling like he has to rush to say something to fix this and also clap a hand over his mouth before he makes it worse at the same time, “he mentioned yesterday that he’d stop by your place later that day. Did he?” _Did it go alright? Did you fight?_

He hopes they didn’t fight. 

He had told Danny that Tim was having a bad day, hadn’t he? Maybe he hadn’t visited. Or maybe he did, but it was perfectly civil and fine. 

“Don’t worry about it, Martin,” Sasha says after a slightly too long moment of Tim not responding. She smiles at him, and it looks a bit strained at the edges now. “It’s not any of our business, right? It’s family stuff.” 

_Except you clearly know what happened yesterday and I don’t,_ he thinks and doesn’t say. Meaning that it’s not any of _his_ business, to be exact. 

“Right,” he says. 

“Well,” Sasha says, “thanks again for these. Tim, could I talk to you about something in my office?” 

That’s something Sasha says a lot. ‘Can I talk to you in my office?’ In the gravest, most somber voice she can manage before her smile breaks it. It’s a joke when she says it, as if the idea of summoning one of them to stand by her desk while she scolds or addresses them is laughable, like she just likes the excuse of finally getting to say _my office_ after being relegated to a bullpen for the majority of her academic career. 

There had been a few days at the start of all of this when Tim would call her boss instead of Sasha, peppering it into almost every sentence addressed to her, like a giddy, teasing little celebration. He’d eventually gone back to just calling her Sasha, so he guessed that she’d asked him to go back to that at some point when Martin wasn’t in the room, but she’d smiled and beamed whenever he’d done it. She hadn’t hated it. She likes being the Head Archivist, she likes being promoted, being the boss, having her own office. But at the same time, she isn’t like any other boss Martin’s ever had. She’s not serious about it. Or, she is, she takes her job very seriously, she’s just… she’s a peer, even though she’s in charge. It’s nice. 

When Sasha asks to see one of them in her office, she says it with a cartoonish sternness, and then it ends up just being because she was feeling too lazy to get out of her chair to walk over to them to hand over a statement that she wanted for them to look into, or she wanted to ask some clarifying questions about some follow up work that had been done a few days prior. The door stays open. 

This isn’t like that. She doesn’t say it with over the top gravitas. She doesn’t say it like it’s a joke or a bit of playful bragging. She says it like there’s something she really does want to talk to Tim about in her office. 

Where Martin can’t hear. 

“Yeah,” Tim says. He’d looked tired before Martin had asked that stupid question about Danny, he’d looked focused on devouring his pastry. He looks tense now, his jaw clenched, not eating. Sasha grabs his wrist and pulls him away, into her office without much ceremony or drama. She just needs to talk to him about something, alone, in her office, away from the only other person in this department. No big deal. 

The door closes behind them. He can very faintly hear their voices past the door if he sits still and focuses on listening, but no distinct words. Eventually, Martin gets back to work, his keys click-clacking in the silent space. There’s no reason not to, right? He knows where Tim and Sasha are now. They’re at work. So there’s no need to be worried or distracted. 

It’s hard sometimes, working in a department with two people who are so close. 

They stay in there for a long time. 

Danny spends a long time trying to think of a single person he knows who isn’t Tim. 

There are so many, of course. There’s his glamorous ex girlfriend that he’d met during his latest flirtation with modeling, broken up with on good terms. There’s his trophy winning ex boyfriend, who’d taught him how to surf during the six months when he’d been very, very interested in that. There’s his good friend that made amazing drinks, the sorts with flipped bottles and gradient colors and flames on the top, that he met with every time he stopped by the country they lived in. There’s the woman he got to know during his brief stint with paragliding, the man who taught him how to ski, the person he had so much fun playing poker with every few months. 

It’s a parade of smiling, beautiful faces, all so happy to see him again after he’s spent months on another continent, spending time with other smiling, beautiful people equally happy to see him. 

He can’t remember a single name. He can’t remember which country each of these wonderful, exciting friends had resided in. Why? He’d had so much fun with all of them. They’d all clearly liked him so much. He should remember more about them, shouldn’t he? They were his friends, weren’t they? 

Weren’t they? 

He walks through London. He’d left the Trophy Room after he’d managed to convince Nikola that he could handle this himself. The animals get chattery sometimes, so much so that it’s hard to even hear himself think. It’s still hard to think now that he’s left, actually. He feels like he’s stayed up all night for too many nights in a row. It makes a dim sense memory prickle across his skin, the feeling of being jet lagged, something he went through more often than most people. How had he dealt with that then? 

The solution escapes him. Some memories are easier to grasp than others. It’s besides the point; whatever this is, this _familiar_ feeling, it isn’t jetlag. He’s felt it before, throughout the years. It grows slowly beneath his skin, like a migraine patiently creeping its way further and further into his skull until it’s a pounding, throbbing, inescapable thing that steals all of his focus. 

And then, just as mysteriously and inexplicably as it had appeared, it would eventually fade away on its own. The migraines and the tight, unpleasant feeling scraping away at him underneath his skin both. Except now he has to find whatever elusive trigger makes this-- this hunger? Whatever makes it go away. He has to find it, and he has to pull the lever to make it go off. Or else, Nikola’s going to help him do it. 

There’s no threat greater than the promise of Nikola’s help. 

He wanders the streets of London, and tries to think of a single person who could help that isn’t Tim, because Tim can’t (won’t) help him now. Not when that woman with the horrible _eyes_ is with him. Does it have to be someone he knows? Nikola had said something about using his pretty face to lure someone away somewhere dark and private. To do what? _That_ can’t possibly be the solution. He knows from this skin’s memories that this isn’t what that desire feels like. It’s not this urgent, this painful, this consuming, this _draining._ Whatever he needs, it isn’t sex. 

All he knows is that he needs to get it from a person. He needs someone, he needs someone willing to _help_ him--

The memory of someone leaning in close over him, moving an umbrella to cover him flashes through his mind. The cold, frigid drops hitting his skin going away, replaced by the gentle pattering onto the taut fabric held over his head. Looking up to see a friendly face. Not a friend, not someone he knows, but. He had been very friendly, hadn’t he. 

Martin, wasn’t it? He doesn’t know where he lives. But he does know where he works. 


End file.
